Fools for Scandal (Warner Bros.) (1938)

Mat 206——30c Mervyn LeRoy Doesn't Intend Film “Messages Interviewed by Alex Evelove “Tet’s get this straight from the first,” Mervyn LeRoy said as he swiveled from right to left in the massive chair behind the massive desk in his bungalow on the Warner Bros. lot. “T have no social consciousness when I make the films the people say show social consciousness. I have no messages of any kind. The one thing I am concerned with, to the exclusion of everything else, is entertainment. I want a story that will entertain, that will have ‘sock’ and impact and humanity. I don’t look for messages. I am looking only for stories and players to entertain those people who are good enough to spend their entertainment allowance on movies.” LeRoy reminisced about “Little Caesar,” “Five Star Final,” “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” all among his successes of the past. He remembered how people had read social implications into each of them: (1) exposure of gangster conditions; (2) exposure of journalism conditions; (3) exposure of penal conditions; and all with sweeping social significances, according to many critics. “In each case,” LeRoy said, “I fell for those stories hook, line and sinker because I thought they were really tremendous entertainment. I wasn’t looking for social significances then and I still don’t. “When I made ‘They Won’t Forget,’ about which the critics and fans have been so kind, I did it because I saw in it a new story, a completely different story that would entertain. I’m pleased if it becomes memorable.” His last two—‘Three Men on a Horse” and “The King and the Chorus Girl’ — were as different from “Five Star Final’ and the others as comedy differs naturally from drama. “As Shakespeare said, ‘The Play Is The Thing.’ Story, story, story! That’s it. Stories that are entertainment and let the social messages fall where they may.” LeRoy’s purpose in the twenty years he has been in Hollywood— ever since the first job there when he was a wardrobe folder in the old Lasky studio—has been simply to satisfy the public. Personalities, too, must satisfy the public, just as well as stories. Personalities, according to the man whose pictures are credited with it, must have “heart.” “The reason I want to do a story,” he says, “is because it has ‘heart.’ It can’t be phony in any way. Realism is necessary in the story and to get it on the screen you need people who have ‘heart.’ “Let’s take ‘They Won’t Forget’ as an example,” he continued. “There are half a dozen brand new personalities in it. Gloria Dickson and Lana Turner are two of them. They had never been inside a studio before they started in that picture. Yet each of those kids came through with a beautiful job of acting and evidence of plenty of glamour. “That’s because they had the heart to be real people instead of puppets walking through a story. They got in there and forgot themselves to be somebody else.” Glamour, according to the producer, can’t be bought, even though thousands of dollars are spent on it weekly in Hollywood. “You’ve got it or you haven’t,” he says. “You can’t buy it. The only thing you can do is to have it recognized and brought out.” LeRoy believes implicitly in the importance of newness—in story, personality and treatment. His most recent picture, ‘Fools for Scandal,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre, has those qualities. It deals with the adventures of an American movie star, played by Carole Lombard, in London and Paris with a _ nobleman in disguise. This is Fernand Gravet, who won such a triumph last year in “The King and the Chorus Girl.” Gravet is something entirely new to American audiences. He is not only a handsome fellow and a splendid actor, but sings and dances as well. He is far more appealing in every way than was Maurice Chevalier, who was so popular here a few years back. Other members of the cast include such comedy experts as Ralph Bellamy, Allen Jenkins, Marie Wilson, Isabel Jeans, Melville Cooper and Heather Thatcher. Mat 107—1ie Carole’s New Hat Gives Mr. Gable A $90 Headache (Advance ) A gag which cost him $90 was Clark Gable’s contribution to feminine fashions for 1938. Gable, shopping for hats and other items of masculine wearing apparel, saw some of the more feathery Alpine headgear on display. Thinking them too feminine for a man, he decided to send a couple of them as a joke, to Carcle Lombard, then working in “Fools For Scandal,” the Mervyn lieRoy comedy in which she stars for Warner Bros. Miss Lombard, noted as one of the foremost film fashion experts and style innovator of high standing in the woman’s world, seized on the plushy hat as an ideal item for a mannishly tailored sports suit she had just bought. To add her own distinctive touch, she tied a wide silk band around it as shown in the picture above. Feminine friends, seeing her style invention, flocked on the bandwagon, with the result that men’s hat departments are putting in large stocks of Tyrolean hats for the wives and sweethearts of their male patrons. The gag started the new trend which threatens to catch on with the ladies like the Empress Eugenie hat fad of a few years ago. But it cost Clark Gable $90, neverless. When he got the bill for the two hats he sent Miss Lombard, he discovered that they cost $45 each. “Fools For Scandal,” in which the great Franco-Belgian comedian, Fernand Gravet, co-stars with Miss Lombard, will be the feature attraction next Friday at the Strand Theatre. LeRoy personally directed it as well as produced it. This marks (no pun) the way our artist sees the three principals in "Fools For Scandal" . . . Fernand Gravet, Carole Lombard and . Allen Jenkins. And if you want to know what they are saying we » quote—Carole: "How did you hook that rug?"' To which alert Allen—the rambling retorter, retorts: "A loan is how he did it!" tee ne Ach yy SEE For =@lmy AS 7 : oe Waadeu L Tapers Mat 224—30c Mat 112—I5e¢ Gravet Grounded For Safety While Working in Movie (Advance ) Mervyn LeRoy took no chances on a horse tossing away an investment of over a million dollars. _So the producer-director, when preparing “Fools For Scandal,” starring Carole Lombard and Fernand Gravet, for the Warner Bros. cameras, “grounded” Gravet from his favorite sport of jumping horses over the hurdles, gates and other obstacles of the Hollywood riding academies until production was completed. Gravet’s first move when he came to Hollywood to begin work on “Fools For Scandal,” was to get a suitable mount and teach him to jump. During that time, a photographer made some action pictures of the Continental star which were submitted to LeRoy for his okay. That was the first he knew of his star’s jumping habits and he immediately forbade further indulgence in the sport. Gravet, as an expert horseman, explained that he feels safer on a horse than he does driving his car over to the studio. But LeRoy insisted that he didn’t want to jeopardize his star’s neck and “Fools For Scandal,’ for which he was allotted an enormous production budget. So Fernand stayed afoot. The comedy, which LeRoy directed as well as produced, comes to the Strand Theatre next Friday. Besides Gravet and Miss Lombard the cast includes Ralph Beljlamy, Isabel Jeans, Allen Jenkins, Marie Wilson, Marcia Ralston, Heather Thatcher and many others. Ralph Proposes— Carole Disposes?! There’s many a man in Hollywood and elsewhere who wouldn’t mind getting down on his hands and proposing to Carole Lombard but before he tries it, he should talk to Ralph Bellamy. For two days Ralph was not only on his knees to Carole for scenes in “Fools for Scandal” at Warner Bros., but when she turned away from him, he had to walk after her and not wait to stand up to do it either. “The total upkeep to date has been four pair of dress trousers and sixteen square inches of epidermis,” Bellamy reported, “and >»? Carole hasn’t even said ‘yes’. Two Roles For One Carole Lombard’s funniest experience happened during her Mack Sennett bathing beauty days. The star of “Fools For Scandal,” was working in a Sennett epic that grew from a two-reeler into a seven-reeler. But there was no story as they discovered later. When Sennett realized that his seven-reel feature super-special wouldn’t have any box-office draw he divided it in half. It was released as two separate films, “The Girl from Nowhere” and “The Gir! from Everywhere.” Page Six